


a contemplation, a restraint, a sincerity

by heyfightme



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Artists, F/F, Future Fic, Hook-Up, Meet-Cute, Museums, and lardo loves girls, lardo is a lesbian, lardo is butch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 16:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14217582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyfightme/pseuds/heyfightme
Summary: Her business cards – and for that matter, the stencil on the entryway wall – readLarissa Duan, and she mostly goes byLorLaraamong friends. Her mother still calls herLala, and the gallery staff staunchly refer to her only asMs. Duan, so hearing someone call “Lardo” across the heads of turtleneck-wearing art-goers takes a moment too long to register. Lara turns from her conversation slowly, urge to holler back rising like it’s some sort of Pavlovian response. She fights it.At her first exhibition opening, Larissa Duan runs in to Camilla Collins. She may not remember her, but that doesn't really matter - people change a lot after college.A future fic in which Lardo is forging her way as an artist, after having forged her way with her identity.





	a contemplation, a restraint, a sincerity

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking a lot about Lardo, and contemplating her as a woman who I think is easy to read as lesbian-coded (actual canon notwithstanding). I've been thinking even more about the ways in which she is GNC, and how in my experience that is only something that develops as we (i.e. lesbians) get older and more comfortable with themselves.
> 
> Anyway, this is post-college, a few years down the line, in which Lardo gets to enjoy her first (underground, indie) art opening, and something unprecedented happens while she's there.

> “The lesbian gaze meant that there was **a contemplation, a restraint, a sincerity** and a warrior-quality. This lesbian look was compelling. While your heterosexual woman model might compel the rest of the world to look at her, a lesbian was addressing you.”
> 
> \- Honey Lee Cottrell

 

 

Her business cards – and for that matter, the stencil on the entryway wall – read _Larissa Duan_ , and she mostly goes by _L_ or _Lara_ among friends. Her mother still calls her _Lala_ , and the gallery staff staunchly refer to her only as _Ms. Duan_ , so hearing someone call “ _Lardo_ ” across the heads of turtleneck-wearing art-goers takes a moment too long to register. Lara turns from her conversation slowly, urge to holler back rising like it’s some sort of Pavlovian response. She fights it.

 

The caller seems to tower above the crowd, though it may be any number of things that make her stand out: the blonde of her hair; the assured way she navigates the gathering; the carmine of her dress. Her face, round and framed by confident brows, doesn’t help Lara with recognition any more than her college nickname had. Still, she smiles in welcome, because this may be a party, but the blonde is wearing a lot of money and Lara has paintings to sell.

 

Blonde shakes with a firm grip, stepping in close as she does so.

“I knew you’d be busy, but I really wanted to see if I could say ‘hi.’ And congratulations, of course. A friend of mine mentioned this artist she wanted to check out, and when she said your name, and where the showing was, I just – I’m going to dinner, just around the corner, and I thought I’d stop by and say – This is all… just, it’s wonderful. Really amazing.” She glances around to the nearest painting, eyes lighting in a smile and lights catching on the highlight of her cheekbones. Lara feels her back straighten, unconsciously. She shoves her relinquished hand into her trouser pocket, and smooths her tie with the other.

“Yeah, you know. Thanks for stopping by.”

It breaks casual, somehow. Blonde’s dress comes to the base of her throat, and is sharply A-line, but bares her arms and her legs from mid-thigh, and –

“I’m so sorry; I interrupted. Super rude. I’m Camilla Collins.”

And Camilla Collins is extending that firm grip to Tajeh, who takes and shakes as though she is any other patron and Lara’s mind isn’t spinning into overdrive. Even with a name for the face, nothing clicks.

 

“Right, sorry.” It sounds genuine, but it’s definitely more to Camilla Collins than to Tajeh. “Tajeh, this is Camilla. We were at college together.” Camilla doesn’t even blink. It’s a success of a guess. “Tajeh curated me.”

While Camilla’s nose scrunches through a laugh, Tajeh’s nose scrunches with annoyance.

“It sounds like I did something gross to you when you say it like that. I’ll let you reunite.” He’s already stepping away, patting Lara on the shoulder through his excuse. “I have work-type things to do, anyway.”

 

Alone with Camilla, Lara tries to smile. It feels gummy and fake. Camilla smiles back.

 

“You don’t remember me.”

Lara clenches her jaw to stop it from dropping. No longer in danger of exposing herself, she manages a defensive “What? No. I do.”

Camilla smiles again, just as pretty, biting briefly at her bottom lip. She shakes her head.

“You don’t, but it’s fine. We only met, like… once, twice. Winter Screw?”

Lara squints briefly, and tries for an apologetic shrug.

“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t really hang with the guys at Screw?”

It is another guess that turns into a question, slightly pleading in an attempt to make up for how awfully she is handling this whole reunion. The nickname, the strength in Camilla’s arms, her face… she was probably a hockey bro hookup. One for the charts, for sure: high-tier, worthy of bragging rights.

 

Lara never paid much attention to any of the girls who came to the Haus. She sometimes caught a gender studies major with short bangs leaving Shitty’s room, and there were deets dishes with Jack. All those girls were fleeting, but Lardo was a permanent fixture. She _wasn’t like other girls_. She could burp the alphabet and win at pong. She knew the rules to hockey, even if she couldn’t stand on skates. She gave out high-fives and winks of approval when Ransom and Holster pulled; she teased the Frogs when they didn’t.

 

Now, Lara wishes she could say something more joking, playing at sleazy – _I couldn’t forget a face like that_. Or, _I’m the dumbest person alive, for not remembering you_. Anything lame and stupid, to get Camilla laughing again.

 

“The guys,” Camilla muses briefly, a teasing little reflection. “We talked another time, at their house?”

Lara feels dumb, in every sense of the word.

“I – uh. Sorry. I just really don’t – shit, this is so rude of me.”

Camilla does laugh again, and it’s a raspy sound. Deep, and sultry. She runs fingers through her hair briefly, and it is left a little haphazard in their wake.

“It’s really fine. There were probably all kinds of girls circling in and out of that place; I didn’t expect you to…” She trails off with a shrug of her shoulder. Lara wants to reach up, and smooth the tangle formed in her hair. “Do you see any of them still? The hockey guys, I mean,” she adds before Lara can make a joke. “Not the dozens of girls.”

There’s a double-edge to the joke, and Lara finds herself squinting again. She smooths her tie once more.

 

“I mean... Everyone’s busy. I’ve been in a cave for the last six months, getting – y’know.” She gestures to the closest painting, the one that Camilla had smiled at before. It is large, and looming, and Lara is hyper conscious of the fact that hidden in the swathes and swirls of color, if you stare long enough, there are two women sixty-nining.

 

“But, uh.” She has to clear her throat, deliberately relax her shoulders. “Post-college. S’hard to keep track of everyone. I see Bitty the most, probably. Um – Eric Bittle? He was – I don’t know if you knew him. But, now he’s working for this café-slash-restaurant place, and I convinced the gallery to get them to cater, and he got their owner to buy some work, so. Bit of friendly nepotism. He, uh, his partner is Jack. Jack Zimmermann? Do you –?”

 

Disquietingly, and with a multiplying effect on Lara’s building sense of awkwardness, Camilla snorts out a chuckle.

“You really don’t remember me at all, do you?” Before Lara can apologize again, Camilla is brushing another hand through her mussed hair and shrugging with an air of self-deprecation. “Jack and I dated. Like, putting it delicately. I thought about getting in touch again, because he was all over Outsports for a while and I just wanted to – ” She makes an unformed gesture, which could be interpreted any number of ways. Her fluttering hand lands on her own bicep, arm crossing her chest. “But being all, ‘hey, we used to bone! Congrats on your boyfriend.’ Seemed a bit… I don’t know. Poor taste.”

 

That, more than any of Camilla’s smiles, more than the clear brown of her eyes, makes Lara finally stop being so aware of her posture. She smirks back, mouth moving easy, and feels her own laugh. There is relief there, if Lara is being honest with herself. The crossover could have hit so much closer to home.

“Well, y’know. He’s doing good. They were going to come tonight, but, ah – work, and stuff. They’ve already bought something anyway, it’s –” She motions for Camilla to follow her to another work, weaving through the crowd and glancing back only once to ensure she is actually there. Camilla is tall, even in flat shoes, and in her red dress, trailing wafts of flowery perfume, Lara feels hyper-aware of her. She couldn’t be lost, even with the room as busy as it is.

 

“This.” The painting they stop at has its label already marked by a red dot – hopefully not the only one, with the night properly underway. “Jack called me up, said they were looking through my catalogue and they wanted this one. Probably, like, out of loyalty and pity, but I’m not exactly gonna argue.”

Lara doesn’t look at it; she knows it by heart. Instead, she looks at Camilla, watching her face for signs that she sees what is hidden in the swatches of yellow, red, and blue. There is a couple in there, layered on top of each other, bodies nondescript yet connected: a back, encircled by arms, bracketed by legs. A merging of a kind, not necessarily sexual, but still intentionally raw.

 

Camilla blinks, a slow sweep of lashes. Her bottom lip puckers beneath her teeth. She makes a small noise; an intake of breath, sharp and quiet, though Lara is standing close.

“That’s –” she starts, and blinks again. “God, I’m sorry. Everything that I want to say just sounds so dumb. I don’t know how to talk about art.” She looks down to Lara, and there is a little redness high on her cheekbones. “It’s beautiful, Lardo. I really like it.”

“That’s good. You don’t really need to say more than that.” Lara has to glance away. Camilla’s eyes are the color of whiskey, and Lara’s mouth is dry. “I, uh. I go by Lara now, mostly. You can’t really make serious art when your catalogue says ‘ _paintings by Lardo_.’”

 

It isn’t for approval that Lara looks back up, but she still gets a trickle of warmth in her throat. When Camilla smiles, there is a slight overlap between her front two teeth.

“Smart. Like, no offense, but I always thought ‘Lardo’ was really weird? The first time I heard Jack say it, I thought he was being a dick, and then it was like – ‘no, she actually responds to it. She’s cool with it.’” Camilla rolls her eyes a little, but it seems more like self-deprecation than poking fun. “I was so militant and defensive in college. Like, even going to Samwell, which was – you know, it was pretty good about inclusivity and stuff generally. I was still totally like, ‘if that man so much as looks at a girl wrong, I will fly across the room and kill him.’” She punctuates it with a throaty chuckle, and tucks her hair behind her ear again. Lara becomes very aware of her own hands, and the way they spark with a damp feeling. “And then I met you, and it was this moment of realization: ‘oh, alright. Yeah. She can totally handle herself.’”

 

That tone is back in her voice, the same one with which she’d said _dozens of girls_ , and Lara squints again but there is also a solid click in the back of her brain – the click of knowing that she’s not misreading Camilla, just as Camilla isn’t misreading her: she sees Lara’s cropped hair, her button-down, her boots. She knows it’s not just style.

 

Lara smirks deliberately, huffs a laugh, and flicks her gaze over Camilla’s body. Camilla sees it, and bites her lip again.

 

“We’re talking about me a lot. What about you?”

As she asks it, Lara reaches out to brush lightly at the skin of Camilla’s arm, an orchestrated invitation. Brief though it is, Camilla leans into it, and her weight shifts, hip jutting out and visibly pulling the fabric of her dress higher. She sweeps her hair over her shoulder. Each of these movements draw Lara’s eyes, Camilla’s own orchestrated invitation to look at her thigh, at the sun-kissed muscles of her arms, and back to the bitten red of her lips.

“We’re talking about you because this is your exhibition. And anyway, there isn’t much to tell about me: I work for TD Garden, in events management. It’s a desk job, really. Grunt work.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“Events management? Yeah. Yes. It’s a long road, but… I don’t know, maybe one day I’ll be in charge of making the U.S. Open run smoothly.”

“So, you’re a career girl.”

This makes Camilla laugh once more, which Lara counts as a win. She flicks her hair again as she does it, knowingly, like she can see the way Lara tracks it each time, like she can see the way it snatches the breath in Lara’s lungs.

 

“I’m doing what I’m doing,” Camilla says, and that is something which Lara understands to her core. She nods, feeling it the wrong side of too serious, and touches Camilla’s arm again as she steps closer.

“Hey. You want to… do something else? Coffee?”

Camilla leans towards her, conspiratorial, and Lara inhales the heady floral spice of her perfume.

“You have to stay. This is your exhibition, remember? And I have a dinner thing.”

Lara blinks, and it all grinds back in: the crowd, the low murmur of talking, the steady throb of the background music. The painting looming over them, rough and suggestive. She swallows.

“I didn’t mean – like, not now. After? Are you free later? We can… there’s a bar, nearby. They’re open late. They have good – um. Whiskey. We can catch up more.”

“Sure.” There is a slight purse to Camilla’s lips, a slight hint of her tongue as she licks them. “Around ten? Ten-thirty? I can come back.”

“Ten,” Lara confirms.

 

Camilla is easy to follow as she leaves the room, glancing back to smile at Lara one last time. Lara slides her hands into her pockets, barely biting down on the _holy shit_ rising to her mouth.

 

* * *

 

At ten-thirteen, when Lara finally excuses herself from the profuse congratulations of the gallery director, Camilla is leaning against the concrete wall outside, tapping at her phone. As Lara watches, she extends her leg in front of her, idly dangling her ballet flat from her toes before snapping the heel back onto her foot and dropping it to the ground with a definitive stomp. She cuts a long line, wearing a loose and drapey cream coat that falls away from her body as she leans. It is a line which Lara wants to feel, to align her own body with, to press against.

 

She settles for calling out, “Camilla.”

 

Camilla responds to Lara’s voice with a bright expression and a delighted-yet-easy, “There you are.” Easy too is the way she shoves off the wall, coat swirling around her as she straightens, steps taken towards Lara with a fluid grace. She stops barely a foot away, bringing that thick floral scent with her. Her mouth is shiny, freshly-glossed. A diamond-like stone in her earlobe catches the streetlight as she pulls her hair behind her ear.

“So, whiskey?” she asks, almost a murmur.

Lara’s own coat is square-shouldered and purposefully blocky. She pockets her hands.

“There’s the bar, about five minutes that way.” She indicates behind her, along the deserted street. “Or I’m about ten minutes the other way, and my whiskey is free.”

“Bold,” Camilla remarks, raising an eyebrow. When she bites her lip this time, it is with a dropped gaze and a hint of uncertain blush in her cheeks. “I’m glad I read it right. I mean – this is…” She trails off, leaving it open, and Lara clears her throat.

“Something. Consenting adults.”

Camilla looks up through a laugh, nose scrunching a little. She winks.

“Right. Good. Well, lead on.”

 

They fall into step, brushing shoulders, conversation suspended around niceties: _how was dinner? Did any other paintings get sold? It sure is nice out tonight_. The conversation all but peters out when they reach Lara’s one-bedroom apartment.

 

Lara drinks her whiskey neat, but Camilla asks for it with ice and soda, and when Lara leans in to kiss her, her lips are cold. They sit on Lara’s thrifted couch in her living room, only light coming from the exposed-bulb lamp that a friend had made for her. Their thighs touch, and Lara barely waits two sips before taking the chance to press their mouths together. She cups Camilla’s neck as she does so, catching some hair between her fingers, feeling the rest of it pooling over her wrist. Camilla scratches slightly into the shaved parts at the back of Lara’s head, and sighs into her mouth.

 

There is still a hint of the ice on her tongue, but it warms quickly as Lara massages it with her own. There is the edge of the whiskey, and the edge of Camilla’s teeth as she scrapes at Lara’s bottom lip. Lara hears herself grunt, and feels it as a tug in her gut. She pulls away momentarily, leaning to set her mostly-full glass on the floor, and Camilla follows her lead before twisting on the couch to face Lara wholly, inviting and accessible, cream coat still pooling around her. Lara re-adjusts herself as well, arm across the back of the couch, leaning up and in to kiss Camilla again. She feels Camilla pulling at the collar of her coat, feels her smoothing over her tie. Without pulling from Camilla’s mouth, Lara blindly pulls at her jacket, tugging it off until she is only wearing her shirt. She aims for reciprocation, pushing at the soft cream around Camilla’s shoulders until her fingertips meet skin. Camilla’s hands leaves her body to help the endeavor, kiss becoming bare and distracted as the pulls her arms from sleeves.

 

Lara strokes at Camilla’s bare biceps, kissing from her lips to her cheek to her jaw to her neck, and reveling in the quiet gasp Camilla makes as Lara pushes lushly against her pulse point.

“Can I stay the night?” she whispers, and Lara hums approval into her throat.

 

* * *

 

Camilla’s bra matches her panties, both of them nude colored and thin, and both of them are on Lara’s nightstand when she wakes in the morning. Camilla sleeps on her front, hugging the pillow, and her breathing stays deep when Lara picks her way out of the blankets. On her feet, she stretches, then dressing in sweats and a t-shirt from the chair in the corner of the room. She leaves the door open as she leaves – another invitation.

 

Her phone is still in the pocket of her coat, discarded on the couch. She plugs it in at the kitchen counter to charge, and swipes it open as her coffee brews.

 

> Bitty (00:37)  
>  Happy Opening! I hope it all went well girl <3 We’re both sorry we couldn’t come xx

 

Coffee poured, breathing in the heat of it, Lara’s thumb hovers over the keyboard. Shuffling from her room makes her look up, to find Camilla in the doorway, wearing appropriated boxers and Lara’s button-down from the previous night, unbuttoned and a little snug across the shoulders. Her hair is flat on one side, and voluminous on the other, and her smile comes through a fraction bleary.

“Morning,” she says, voice even deeper through a rasp.

“Morning. Coffee?”

 

Lara pours Camilla a cup, gets a kiss to her temple for her troubles, and taps out a response to Bitty.

 

> L (07:12)  
>  It went really well ;)

 

By the time Bitty’s reply comes through, Lara’s phone is forgotten. She stands between Camilla’s knees where she sits on the counter, craning up into coffee-tainted kisses, running assured fingers along Camilla’s firm thighs, under the hem of the boxers. Camilla clutches at her neck, curling over her, and hooks her feet behind Lara’s back.

 

Lara is encircled by arms, bracketed by legs, and she leans into Camilla’s touch even as she breaks away to whisper, “You’re not busy today, are you?”

Camilla laughs, and Lara feels the vibrations in the tips of her fingers where they’re pushed at the line of Camilla’s abdomen and hips. Camilla kisses Lara’s nose, and squeezes her sides with her knees, and says, “I think we’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feel free to comment and/or share if you enjoyed, especially if you have thoughts/comments about butch Lardo ♡( ◡‿◡ )
> 
> (I can also be found [on tumblr](http://heyfightme.tumblr.com) for the latter purpose)


End file.
